


Netflix and Chill

by entirely_the_wrong_sort



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 03:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7027045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entirely_the_wrong_sort/pseuds/entirely_the_wrong_sort
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, I guess it's <i>technically</i> a coda for 11.04-11.09? Just extrapolation of Cas' state of mind and him needing Sam's TV. Because Sam and Cas' relationship needs more attention. Also, it's not as fun as the title implies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sam and Cas

Sam woke up to the sound of gun shots. He sat up, tense, and his eyes immediately fell on a harshly lit figure draped in the chair by his bed.

“Cas?” he asked, equal parts relieved and bemused. Castiel jumped a little when he noticed Sam and raised the remote control in his lap to mute the TV that was showing a dramatic police chase.

“I’m sorry, did the television disturb you?”

Sam’s brain began to wake up. He remembered letting Cas stay to finish the episode of Hannibal he was watching and himself becoming engrossed in the slow motion shots of artfully mutilated corpses and disturbingly attractive nouveau cuisine. He must’ve fallen asleep somewhere towards the end of season two, still in last night's clothes. Sam rubbed his eyes and looked at his phone clock. “It’s nearly eight,” he yawned. He’d neglected to set his alarm, but even so, he rarely needed one anyway. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You slept so soundly, I thought you needed the rest,” Cas shrugged.

“Wait, have you been here _all night_?”

Cas straightened a little in the chair and looked sheepishly at Sam’s shoulder. He still looked awful, perhaps worse in the ghostly flickering glare of the muted TV; small and empty and old. He looked so vacant he could well be dead, eyes so glassy Sam could see the speeding police cars as if they were being projected from Cas’ skull. It was heartbreaking to see. Sam wished he would at least blink.

“Uh, yes. You fell asleep and the sound of the television didn’t seem to bother you so I thought I’d be all right to continue.” Cas made to stand up. “I’m sorry, Sam, I should’ve - ” 

“No. No, Cas, it’s fine.” Sam reached over to click the bedside lamp on. “It’s just… I dunno, it can’t be healthy for your recovery to pull all nighters like this.”

“I don’t need sleep, Sam.”

“No, I know, I just mean…” he began, but he didn’t feel like losing another argument with Cas over Cas’ health: he was in a relatively good mood, all things considered. “Never mind.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable. I actually had a great night’s sleep. Best I’ve had in…” he paused to think, stretching out like a cat, “maybe years. Huh, maybe it’s your angelic grace or something.”

Cas stared at him with his full attention, which was almost worse than the blankness. He stared right into his soul and it was more than a little unnerving in its intensity. It sent jolts of adrenaline through Sam’s veins as though he were in the middle of fighting for his life. It was exhausting; he didn’t know how Dean could withstand it. “No, I doubt that my grace played any part in it.”

“I was joking, Cas,” Sam smiled. He got out of bed and began to potter around getting ready for the day to avoid having to look at his impromptu roommate.

“It’s more likely due to the fact that you prefer sleeping in company.”

“Excuse me?” Sam coughed as he pulled last night's shirt over his head, suddenly feeling vulnerable.

“Well,” Cas shrugged again, “you spent your entire childhood sleeping in close quarters with Dean and your father… You probably grew used to the sound of others breathing and rustling beside you. In fact, you most likely conditioned yourself to find it comforting.”

Sam had to agree that Cas had a point, nodding slowly as he buttoned up a fresh plaid shirt. He remembered sleeping in the backseat of the Impala as it sped across the country; engine roaring, radio blaring classic rock lullabies. Getting in the backseat even now, he could barely keep his eyes open as soon as she started rolling.

“You’ve never had your own room. You had a college roommate, then your girlfriend Jessica, then of course Dean again.”

“Sometimes... after a rough hunt, I’ll leave the TV on when I go to sleep,” admitted Sam. “I don’t like the stillness.”

“Well, until you settled in here, you’ve never really had to routinely sleep alone. Now, here in your own room… these solid, soundproof walls deep underground, isolated from your brother far down the hall… you’re well and truly alone for the first time in your life.”

There was a long and heavy pause. Sam blinked at Cas, who had turned back to the screen. The cop drama rolled credits on a moody close up of some guy’s anguished face. 

“Wow, way to bring down the room, man. I’ll add psychoanalysis to your resume,” he added under his breath as he pulled on his socks.

“I know both your mind and history intimately, it doesn’t take a great deal of effort to draw such conclusions.” 

Sam forgot that Cas had angelic hearing. “Right,” he cringed. Cas turned from the screen, now displaying show listings, and looked at Sam who stood rooted to the spot, rubbing his neck awkwardly.

“I’ve made you uncomfortable again.”

“No, man, it’s cool! You’re actually pretty on the money, I think. It’s kinda - creepily accurate.” 

Cas stood up and stretched his arms with several creaks and pops like an old ship. Stripped of his beloved trenchcoat and jacket, he was practically naked. He seemed so much shorter, thinner. His unshaven face no longer in the hard glow of the TV screen looked wan and haggard; his bright blue eyes so red-rimmed it was as though he were still in the thrall of Rowena’s spell. He was barely even there. 

Though Sam had never discussed it with Dean, he had always had a powerful sense of reverence in Cas’ presence - no matter the angel’s current manifestation; a low-level static hum in his mind that reminded him that this (now) old friend was a What long before it was a Who. He had grown so accustomed to it that only every so often - when Cas was angry or in pain or worried - he was struck as if by celestial waves with the force of the knowledge that this glorious article of the Lord’s creation had died and would die again for him. Now though, here, it was not one of those times. It was as though Sam were looking at some crumpled facsimile of Cas from an old nightmare.

“I should leave.” 

Cas’ voice shook Sam back to the present and he realised he’d been staring. It took him a second to remember that eye contact doesn’t faze Cas like other people. Sam wished he hadn’t stared anyway. And he wished Cas would stop staring back with those blue eyes so heavy with the weight of his guilt and pain and loneliness that Sam could feel it creeping into his own bones. He already longed for the vacant look back; watching a screen, seeing nothing...

“No, stay. You - you watch your uh, whatever that True Detective ripoff is. Take your time, man.” He hesitated before reaching out and laying a hand on Cas’ hunched shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze to remind himself he was really there. “I’ll leave you to it. You can use the bed - it’s way comfier.”

Cas gave him a weak smile and lowered himself down to the mattress, taking the remote control with him. 

At the door, Sam turned back. “Hey, uh. I’m… I’m cool with it if you wanna hang around tonight. Y’know, while I’m... uh, y’know. Asleep. Or whatever.”

“You wouldn’t prefer privacy?” Cas cocked his head.

“Nah, it’s like you said: I - I find it comforting.”


	2. Sam and Dean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set between 11.04 and 11.05, while Dean's fixing up Baby and the Darkness remains an unknown mystery.

“Heads up.” 

Dean tossed a beer at Sam, who caught it wide-eyed in panic and gave his brother an unimpressed look. Dean laughed as he twisted the cap off his own bottle and took a seat opposite Sam at the table, throwing his feet up beside the pile of papers and leather-bound books.

“Any joy?” he asked. 

Sam frowned and shook his head. “Still nothing. You?”

“Yeah, she’s starting to look like herself again. Need to take one of the classics on a trip out to Arkansas in the morning for some parts though. I tell ya, she’s getting old, Sammy. Parts are getting harder and harder to find at a good price. But anything for my baby. Only the best will do, right?” Dean looked at Sam, who was still frowning intently at his laptop screen. It was clear he hadn’t heard a word Dean’d said. 

“Right, Sam?”

Dean picked up his bottle cap and threw it at his brother. “What?” Sam blinked at him.

“I’m heading to Arkansas for a couple days,” he said louder than necessary. “For car parts. You coming?”

“Uh, no it’s cool. I should stay and try and make some headway on this research, you know?”

“Whatever,” Dean mumbled. He took a long swig of beer and noticed that Sam’s remained unopened on the table. They sat quietly for a minute as Sam started typing what sounded like a goddamn dissertation and Dean leafed through the papers nearest to him, trying not to get engine grease on the centuries-old texts. 

Halfway through his beer, Dean sighed and frowned at his brother. “Are you sure you don’t wanna come? There’s obviously nothing here in the bunker.”

“Dean,” Sam stopped typing and gave Dean his best exasperated face, “we can’t just abandon the search for answers for a pointless road trip.” 

Dean tried not to be offended at the implication that Baby’s health and well-being was pointless, and pushed on. “Come on! We’ll swing by that diner out on seventy five with those killer ‘dogs?” He paused to swig his beer again and licked his lips hesitantly. “I… I think a break might do you good. Clear your head.” 

It was the truth. Dean was as concerned for his little brother’s health as for the car’s; it seemed that in the last few weeks, he hadn’t seen Sam outside of this goddamn library, his face buried in either the laptop or some ancient Men of Letters file. He was over-working himself and that never got results. It wasn’t that Dean didn’t understand - he’d been obsessed himself many times, quite recently in fact, and he wanted answers on the Darkness as much as anything - but they were getting nowhere. 

To be quite frank, he was getting lonely. He missed his brother. Dean was spending his days alone down in the bunker garage with Baby, and between Sam being stuck up here in the library and then going to bed early every night, they had barely spoken beyond courtesies in weeks. 

Even worse, Cas was nowhere to be seen. He was here, living with him - _them_ \- at last. Dean was so eager to make up for lost time and past mistakes, but after what Cas had been through, it wasn’t fair to force Family Fun Time on the guy. So far though, Cas didn’t want to talk to Dean at all. He was holed up in Sam’s room familiarising himself with the long and proud history of American television all day and then seemed to disappear into the ether at night. Last Tuesday evening, when Dean had finally steeled himself (after four or five beers and then enough whiskey to match) to seek out Cas to have Real Talk, he was not in the room that they had made up for him, nor anywhere else. Come morning, when he knew Sam was showering, he checked Sam's room - the only door left to check - and he found him sitting blankly in the eerie glow of Sam’s TV, looking as at home as a piece of the furniture.

What upset him the most about seeing Cas so comfortable in Sam’s space - practically naked in just his shirt and pants, surrounded by the very smell of his brother - was how out of place it made Dean feel. He wasn’t welcome in that room anymore, not like he was before. Now, it wasn’t just _Sam’s_ , it was just _not Dean's_. And he’d found himself in a vicious cycle of denying it and over-thinking it ever since. If Dean didn’t know any better - and he didn’t think he did - he’d suspect they were having secret Friends Only slumber parties; and at this point, having wandered the empty, echoing halls of this place without real human contact for weeks, he was starting to feel real left out of the hair-braiding sessions.

It was jealousy, pure and simple, he knew that. But recognising it didn’t make it easier to come to terms with the fact that he was jealous of his brother and their _mutual_ friend sharing something they were fully entitled to share.

“Nah, man, it’s fine,” Sam said flatly, bringing Dean sharply back to the present. “Besides, it won’t do anyone any good if I spend the whole trip anxious to be here working.”

 _Working and pillow-fighting with your bestest buddy_ , Dean thought before he could control himself. He sighed and drained his beer. “Fine. But dude, will you at least take the rest of tonight off? Come out for a drink to see me off. Thursday’s two for one at Carl’s, so... my treat.” He flashed a cheerful grin.

“Wait, it’s Thursday?” Sam stopped typing again. He saw Sam’s eyes flicker to the bottom corner on the screen and widen in surprise at the time before he slammed the lid closed and stood up.

“Dude! It’s nine o’clock,” Dean exclaimed, glancing incredulously at his own watch. “Come on, seriously?”

“I’m tired, Dean, I don’t wanna go drinking at nine,” shrugged Sam. At his brother’s dejected face, he sighed softly and give him a sympathetic half-smile. “Look, if I haven’t found something when you get back, I promise we’ll make some time to hang out, okay?” _Provided you even notice when I get back_. “I’ll see you in a couple days.”

Dean watched him as he practically sprinted around the corner. He listened to his distant footsteps echo down the hallway until he heard his door open and click shut followed by a notable absence of Cas’ retreating feet. And he was once more left alone with the silence and an empty bottle. As he moved to get up and retreat to his own room, he noticed that Sam had left his laptop, but his unopened beer was gone.

 _Secret slumber party it was, then_ , he thought bitterly as he checked his pocket for the scrawled note with the address of the Pine Bluff specialist auto parts shop, and headed for the garage.


End file.
